Pictured above: Hannah Bitta lives with a passion for all things dance. Though her more pragmatic parents drove her to train as a Model at the University for Beautiful People, Hannah spent her nights off trying to reclaim her first love by freelancing dances for late-night Broadway productions. Pictured here, Hannah quit her 9-5 modeling gig in June 2013 by breaking out into dance on the catwalk of “Dressed to Kilt”. Since then she has been seen dancing on the sets of “Game of Thrones” as a concept fight-scene choreographer.

Pictured above: Maurice spends his day doing three things: getting girls, lifting weights, and spending hours to make himself look this effortlessly gorgeous. He waited forty-five minutes before taking this picture for the sun to hit just the right angle to highlight his pecs, because he worked hard on those suckers.

Pictured above: Thatcherina loves motorcycles, plaid, and long walks on the beach. She has dreamed of being a model ever since the 6th grade, when she realized that her natural body was subpar compared to what it could be with limited caloric intake, surgical alterations, and makeup.

Pictured above: Ivan takes after the Russian side of his family and begins every day by practicing Judo and invading small countries from the rear. His favorite food is vodka. His favorite drink is the blood of his enemies.

“Game of Thrones” is the hit HBO show based on the popular book series by George RR Martin. Recently, the show came back for a fourth season. The show, itself, is known for its copious amounts of (mostly female nudity). So much so that many a student here at CMU has gotten completely and utterly smashed by taking a shot every time a butt or boob appears on screen while watching the show.

Fair warning, readers, the rest of this article will have spoilers for the show.

A few weeks ago on the show the king of the fictional land of “King’s Landing” died. His name was Joffrey and he was an utter turd. He was poisoned at his wedding by someone–who we won’t spoil for you. He was the son of twins (yes. twins) Jamie and Cersei Lannister, who passed him off of the son of the (other) late king Robert Baratheon. (On a side note, the show does require you to be at least somewhat intelligent to follow, though maybe not as much as some fans might have you believe. But you do need to have some brainpower to remember all of the overly-complex family trees. Yay, incest!)

After Joffrey’s death his mother, Cersei, was rather upset, though that might surprise some readers due to Joffrey’s turdish-ness. Standing next to her brother approached and…to put it bluntly…raped her.

There are several things that made the scene rather unexplainable. First off it didn’t happen like that in the book. Yes, yes, we know that adaptations do not always follow to the word the happenings of the books (and this also explains why in the books Joffrey is a long snaky turd as opposed to the bowel-rupturing one in the show). But come on! This isn’t the first time the show has turned a not-rape scene in the book into a full-rape scene in the show (see Khal Drogo). And the scene wouldn’t be nearly as objectionable if it weren’t treated as though nothing had happened in the very next episode, of which Jaime is the arguable hero. Awkward. Also, you know, the whole thing of Jaime’s entire character-arc being based around learning to love and respect and want to protect women.

But maybe readme is being too harsh on the show. When asked whether the scene was consensual, the actor who plays Jaime, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau,

“Yes, and no. There are moments where she gives in, and moments where she pushes him away. But it’s not pretty.” And by moments readme assumes he means the many times that Cersei repeats “no” and “not here”.

The director, Alex Graves, was similarly unconvinced about the rapey-ness of the scene. “Well, it becomes consensual by the end, because anything for them ultimately results in a turn-on, especially a power struggle.”

Yes. Yes that makes perfect sense. readme withdraws its complaint in favor of patting the director on the back. How observant he is to note that their relationship is complex and to show this by taking away Cersei’s agency.

A media storm erupted last week when Hillary Clinton announced her run for the 2016 presidency by having her daughter conceive a child. After all, it’s not like a thirty-four-year-old woman could possibly make the decision to become pregnant for her own sake. As anyone who’s ever had kids can tell you, the only reason your kids will ever have children of their own is so that you can live vicariously through your grandkids. The press hailed the announcement as a brilliant political maneuver: by cleverly deciding to have her daughter decide to have a baby, Clinton makes herself seem that much more sensitive, warm, and maternal, all qualities we Americans require of our female politicians under pain of social humiliation. Pundits, of course, were quick to point out the double standard at play here.

“[It’s] blatantly sexist on its face,” says one Fox News opinion writer. “I don’t recall anyone lauding the fact that Mitt Romney was a grandfather.” Thank you, Fox News, for always checking America on our inherent misandry problem, the only prejudice we Americans still have to overcome in this modern day (we mean, besides us persecuting Christians and being racist to white people, of course). It’s the twenty-first century; misogyny is dead. It’s not like you women really wanted equal pay, right?

For instance, when some pundits wondered if perhaps the impending Clintonchild might make Clinton a worse politician due to her ovaries releasing grandma-hormones that would override all her knowledge of debate protocol and fiscal policy with how to knit embarrassing sweaters and where to buy the most disgusting brands of sugar-free candy, that wasn’t misogyny, just biology. “All I’m saying is that there are certain differences between men and women, differences which are expressed in the exact same way in every man or woman (because those are the only two genders it is possible to be) and which are completely determined at birth by a series of factors that have no cultural component and thus whose validity we should never question,” wrote one blogger on the subject. “How is that sexist?”

Indeed it is not, good blogger. Even if it were, clearly Clinton is the one benefitting from this sexism. After all, as we’ve established, no one ever praised Mitt Romney for being a grandfather. In fact, no one even commented on it at all. It’s almost as though Americans don’t see a male politician’s grand-spawn as having any sort of effect on how good a president they would be. But, no, it’s probably that misandry thing we just said.

Racism gets a bad rap in America today. It seems like you can’t educate people about “the negro” without the media breathing down your neck. But really, is there anything all that bad about not wanting your mistress associating with black people in public? Compared to, say, being a penny-pinching slumlord?

Even as little as this readme writer follows sports, it has been impossible to avoid the uproar over the alleged racism of Donald Sterling. It seems like the owner of the Clippers basketball team has been thoroughly trounced by the media and given a “large” fine by the NBA people-who-give-fines.

But why now, all of a sudden? Sterling was just telling his mistress (mixed-race, mind you, some of his best mistresses have been mixed-race) to stop posting so many damn instagrams with black people. Sure, that could perhaps be taken the wrong way, but it’s not really all that bad.

Not when one realizes that Sterling has been the defendant in multiple discrimination cases brought against him by the Department of Justice. The NBA people-who-give-fines apparently did not notice when the DOJ settled with Sterling over various allegations of housing discrimination, such as when he named one of his apartment complexes the “Korean World Towers,” hung a banner written entirely in Korean in the entryway, and hired armed Korean guards instead of doormen, all in an attempt to scare away the blacks and hispanics who were living there at the time.

“That doesn’t have anything to do with the NBA,” you might say. “There’s no way they could have gotten him in trouble for that.” You’re right, his conversations with his mistress is a much more acceptable area of Sterling’s life for the NBA to get involved. Racists only seem to be able to make the news when they have a leaked tape of the really juicy stuff. Maybe that’s why celebrities get so much air time.

Donald Sterling just wanted to be the white plantation owner of a black basketball team. He succeeded for several years, but now his dream has been crushed. The NBA is not only where young black men go to seek their fortunes, but where old white men’s dreams are crushed. Who’s the racist now?

In December The American Civil Liberties Union (better known by its acronym: the ACLU) filed a complaint against Carnegie Mellon for failing to take the appropriate measures to ensure the safety of a student after “her abusive ex-girlfriend violated its sexual assault policy”.

More recently, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) put out a list of universities and colleges that are under investigation for violating sexual assault and harassment policies. That list includes our fine school.

readme was so surprised to realize that CMU had been mishandling these issues. Filing a complaint with the university has always been so easy, and the university has been so attentive to making sure complaints are addressed quickly and thoroughly, like last year when in response to growing concerns about the mental well-being of the student body, the administration after months of deliberation agreed to open CAPS for a whole extra hour each day.

CMU was added to the OCR’s list presumably as a direct result of the ACLU complaint. Shortly after the student broke off her relationship with the girl who had sexually assaulted her several times, she went to Carnegie Mellon’s administration which orchestrated a “university-mediated agreement to end contact except when needed for academic purposes.”

The contract seemed to have little to no effect since the ex-girlfriend moved in across the hall from the student shortly thereafter. The student filed a complaint with the CMU police who took no particular action beyond notifying the ex-girlfriend of the complaint.

“We don’t understand what this complaint is about,” said an unnamed university official. “We had them fill out the contract.”

When readme pointed out that the contract had about as little effect as those roommate contract they make you fill out freshmen year, the official responded, “Exactly! When someone stays up later that they said they would on their contract we don’t kick them out of school!”

After it was determined that the ex-girlfriend “had violated the University’s sexual assault policy”, CMU graciously allowed the no-contact agreement to stand with the addition of counseling for the ex-girlfriend.

“The ex-girlfriend is clearly a troubled soul,” reasoned the official. “It isn’t Carnegie Mellon’s policy to destroyed a student’s life based on the only somewhat-very-confirmed allegations of another.”

The two girls remained in most of the same activities and the student who had filed the complaint withdrew from much of her campus involvement in order to protect herself.

“Essentially,” continued the official, “what we’re saying is that we don’t trust the students enough to believe that they know when they’re suffering. We’ll be the judge of that.”

He then announced that the university would be releasing a set of online Frequent Crying Evaluations to help the administration receive a comprehensive, non-biased review of the levels of suffering faced by students at the university. “Because nobody would ever lie on those, right?”

Fans of the long-running daytime soap ‘Politics’ were no doubt glued to their television last night. In this thrilling episode, ‘Politics’ made the controversial move to bring back to the show Uncle Unlimited Campaign Donations, finally rescued after his gold-plated helicopter crashed on the remote island of Fiscal Oversight in the season premiere.

Of course, what viewers have really been talking about is the long-awaited culmination of the will-they-won’t-they romance between the GOP and the Affordable Care Act, with the GOP proposing a reasonable amendment to the Act’s legislation in a tender scene. The two’s romance has been fraught with challenge since the start. Ever since the Affordable Care Act disappeared under mysterious circumstances and then resurfaced, having changed its name from Romneycare to Obamacare, the GOP had been frosty to its former flame. It insisted that all it wanted to do was prevent the Affordable Care Act from being implemented, but viewers could see the undeniable chemistry between the two.

“They were trying to be subtle about it,” said one fan of the show, “but I mean, hello, it was obvious from day one the GOP just wanted to get in Obamacare’s pages.”

“You could tell the GOP didn’t want to admit it liked Obamacare,” a blogger writes about the pairing. “But it couldn’t deny how useful the plan would be to those uninsured. And I think there was something taboo about the fact that it was a Democratic bill that really drew the GOP in.”

Of course, the episode ended with no official word on the state of the GOP/Obamacare ship (GObamacare, its fans call it), with the GOP insisting that it was only amending Obamacare to help its friend Small Business Owners, and that as soon as Obama is out of the White House the GOP will go back to trying to get Obamacare repealed. But fans aren’t buying it.

“The GOP has to say that,” one remarked. “They’re still too early on in the relationship to admit they love each other. I bet they’re saving that for the season finale.”

readme recently interviewed Psychology major Tiffany Whitepersonname to an interview and to share an excerpt of her new YA dystopian thriller starring a normal looking, but like pretty and white, girl who saves the world.

The book is based in a near-apocalyptic society where children, at the age of 17, have to decide what to do with the rest of their lives. Their choices are additionally severely limited by a series of harrowing academic tests they must undergo throughout their education as young adults. The more scarred these young people are at time of their choosing, the more choices they will have.

Our hero, or should we say heroine, is the toughest of these brave individuals and her choices are endless. She chooses her destination. Cutthroat Murders University. Otherwise known as “CMU”. Her name? Well, her parents named her “Elizabeth”, but those around her, worshipping her, call her

Zabeth

Little to Zabeth’s knowledge, the tests only get worse after the choosing. She goes through the first year of her harrowing trials. Throughout that time she hears increasing rumors. Some celebratory. Some fearful, exhausted. And it’s called Carnival.

Carnival approaches, and Zabeth swallows bile. She thinks of her first love interest. The dark one from home. and by dark we still mean white but like with black hair and a large browline. And she thinks of her second love interest. The one she’s only met recently, who is less dark but also like still really cool and stuff.

She knows she has to choose. But first she must survive Booth, where other Cutthroat Murderers construct the most impenetrable fort they can in a week while still juggling the other evaluations they have never become accustomed to. The booths are then judged by merit. If they fail, they suffer massive nervous breakdowns.

“That’s only the first book.” Whitepersonname explained to readme. “The next two in the trilogy are, like, darker and edgier. Zabeth swallows a lot of bile.” She teased her next two books, describing a scene in which Zabeth shows her empathy for a bunch of underprivleged “choiceless” people who happen to be like, brown people. “But it’s totally not a white savior thing. It’s just how Zabeth is.”

When asked why she decided to major in Psychology instead of Creative Writing with such grand ambitions for a trilogy, Whitepersonname replied that “you don’t need a writing degree to understand the human condition”. When readme followed up by asking if she had based any of the events in the story off of events she had observed here during her time at Carngie mellon University, she looked at it quizzically. “Why would you ask that? I don’t see the resemblance.”

In the glacial gridlock that is the essence of American politics, where many of the bills that get passed are highly symbolic, like re-affirming that in God we really do trust, one would think that there isn’t much to adding one more state symbol. Especially when there are already over 50 symbols, including a state migratory marine mammal (the northern right whale) and a state hospitality beverage (tea).

But when Olivia McConnell asked to have the Woolly Mammoth to be recognized as South Carolina’s state fossil, she received much more than the standard “We care about you, really!” email in response (which is all I’ve ever gotten when writing to my representatives). A senator put forth the motion, but standing in opposition to the third-grader’s proposal are a group of conservative lawmakers.

One argues that they have too many state symbols already. “You may not know, but symbols require constant upkeep. Take our hospitality beverage, for example. It costs taxpayers good money to pay for all my tea. Adding one more to the list would just put the deficit through the roof, I mean, can you imagine what it would cost to call a fossil our state symbol?”

Another caused trouble by adding three Bible verses directly from Genesis. He claimed that because the Old Testament was used by more than one religion, it was okay for the state to sponsor it. However, he quickly backpedaled and replaced the verbatim quote with a paraphrase, after being convinced that because multiple religions laid claim to the verses, the copyright issues would have been too much of a hassle.

The bill is currently languishing in the state legislature. One legislator spoke with readme on a condition of anonymity, as he didn’t want to hurt his chances in the midterms. “I was going to vote for it, because it seemed like a nice gesture to a schoolgirl, and those have been polling well recently. But now religion has come into it? I need to hear back from my party boss and figure out how that would go over with my constituents before I can make a public statement.”